Measuring A Year
by AnnabelleRivers
Summary: One year measured in scratches in the stone that surrounded her all the time. At a loss of what else to do, as even tears stopped before reaching her eyes, Hermione Granger counted back the days, forwards and backward, reaching 365 before stopping and starting all over again. It was all she had now.
1. Chapter 1

A year.

12 months.

52 weeks.

365 days.

8,760 hours. No, not 8,760 hours because she was taken at approximately 4 am on that first day and that meant-

The counting was endless now. It had become more than a habit to track time. It was now her only link to sanity, counting days, hours, cracks in walls, strings on the spider webs, bites in her food, hairs on her head. Counting was how Hermione Granger desperately tried to keep hold of herself as a year had passed on in the world outside of Malfoy Manor.

There had been a blade, a small sliver of razor blade inside the cell when they first pushed her inside. Mockingly dainty compared to the knife that had dug into her skin, marking Mudblood into her arm, and yet it was just as dangerous. From across the room, Luna had called that she didn't have one. The blade was meant for them to share or perhaps compete for. The dark games their captors played made her head hurt from day one.

It gave them choices. A weapon that could be used against themselves or one of the masked figures taunting them beyond the bars but without having to say it, both Hermione and Luna knew neither choice could be made. Both would end in each other's destruction.

She had decided to use it to mark the days instead. Each morning, when the grandfather clock in the hall above them sounded, she would hold the razor blade steady in her hand and scratch another mark into the stone wall.

It had taken 13 of those marks before the cheers and parties in the manor finally ended, each night adding to her nightmares as magical fireworks blasted on the ground and amplified cheers sang of their victory. 9 more until the number of feet she heard crossing over them all day died down to a smaller number. Only 2 more after that before Bellatrix had made her way down to them, reading with her high-pitched, cackling voice the headlines announcing the new world order before her sister called her back up the stairs again.

It was useless information. They'd known a long time ago which side would win.

On day 38 Hermione had woken up alone in the cellar. Luna was gone but they had suspected for a while now, in the whispered conversations they shared when house above was loud enough to cover them, that _he_ would come for her eventually. Probably for Hermione, too but she hadn't cared enough then to think about that, focusing instead on keeping her frightened friend calm.

Being alone had changed everything.

The counting became more important then. _Vital._

After 86 days, they had let Hermione outside. Three of them, hulking leering men with dark beards and matted down hair had hauled her up the stairs as masked figures watched. The sky had been full of stars that first night but they didn't let her look up long enough to count more than a handful of them. She was walked back and forth across a patch of the grounds behind the manor, passed between different sets of the Death Eaters as they moved her this way and that. The absurdity of what they were doing made her nearly delirious, memories of whining to her parents about always wanting a little puppy she could take on walks like her grade school friends had swirled around her mind as the grass tickled her feet.

Now she was the puppy, _the mutt_...the mangy dog dragged from the pound that no one wanted and yet no one would let go. Or put out of its misery. The Death Eaters said nothing to her, only collecting her out of the dank and dark cellar every 11 days for this display as more watched on from the windows. They walked her over the grounds, contorting her body into stretches that she would never admit gave her a relief.

Why she was there, Hermione had a million speculations for but no answers. Ever since the time Bellatrix had been caught taunting them with the news, there had been silence. Grunts and the occasional slur, but nothing of substance.

Nothing to help her understand and so Hermione Granger kept counting.

The walks, the ones that made her feel like an animal, at least gave her something new to focus on. She had begun to etch an extra little swipe next to her marks on each 11th day. Those were the special ones.

She always made sure to prepare, often saving extra bits of the mushed food levitated over to her twice a day to be as strong of body and mind as possible for each new 11th day.

The third time they manhandled her out past the patio doors, she had managed to catch a glimpse of a small meeting room just off the back end of the Manor. Their masks were off in there, and while she had only caught a fraction of a moment, she had seen _him_ there clearly.

Catching his dark eyes had left her feeling more disoriented than ever and so as much as she was tempted, Hermione never looked for that little room again on her 11th days. It was too much to think _he_ was there watching her- the one who had taken Luna away.

Sometimes she had thought of ways to escape on those walks, carrying the bit of blade inside her hair in case there was ever a time to use it. She counted the steps it took to reach the back door, memorized the way different Death Easters felt when they grabbed her thin arms and waited. The right moment would come.

It had been a new mantra, interrupting the counting before the numbers that grounded her returned.

On day 251, Hermione thought she had found that right moment. That had been the day only two had come to pull her up the stairs and quickly across the expanse of Malfoy Manor. A deviation from the rhythm established in her captive life that she had taken as a sign. Sparks went off behind her eyes as if her brain had come back to life at last.

She had counted her steps and pulled out that bit of blade, slashing it wildly towards one of their throats before pushing off into a full run with all of the energy she could possibly muster. Of course, she had failed. Her body hadn't been strong enough, crumbling to the ground before she thoughts could even track the motion.

They caught her, whipped her with a series of bright purple hexes until she laid still and whimpering, unable to even beg them to stop. All she had was her counting, the number of spells, how many steps back she was dragged down to her prison, a number of times Bellatrix laughed at her tears. Counting kept back the bile rising in her throat when the stone surrounded her again.

When another 11 days passed without being shoved back out of the cellar she had felt the end of those walks with a real pain as if mourning Luna all over again. Tears that she never expected came barreling out at the loss of her small bit of freedom the dank stone that was always in her vision now. A disgusting smelling one of Death Eaters came down to spit at her and tell her it was her fault they'd taken it away. The new orders were to leave her alone until she wasted away.

Hermione had hoped it wouldn't take much longer.

Yet still, she counted the days. Scratching them with her precious blade into the stone by her head. She only moved to eat the gruel that still floated down to her. Their cruel, confusing joke of keeping her alive.

Or at least giving her the option.

On day 361, someone had come down. Alone. And Hermione wished he hadn't.

He wasn't wearing a mask, at least not one made of silver and cloth. He had a manic grin that identified him from the rest, she'd seen it before and it was clear then why they had sent him without an entourage. She had known all along that eventually it would be _him_ to come at last for her.

She would never be able to escape Barty Crouch Jr.

She hadn't the first time, when they caught her hiding out in Luna Lovegood's home, trying to do anything she could to stay alive, all Gryffindor bravery and pride long ago set aside for the chance at a new day's breath. Only he'd come, _Crouch_ , to find them there. Taken them both to the Manor for a handful of coins they exchanged right in front of them. Lives traded with the same eager grins they'd seen too many times over the years. True evil.

Luna had been half-carried to the cellar, her silvery-blue eyes wider than Hermione had ever seen as her pleas to be let go echoed off the walls long after she was out of sight.

Hermione remembered how stiffly Barty had stood then, how his eyes tracked his prey unblinking as Luna was dragged below before turning to her, his dark eyes and flicking tongue an actual nightmare.

Here he was again, looking worse for wear than when she had last seen him through the tiny room by the back doors.

Memories of the morning she had woken alone, nothing in the night waking her to the horrifying fact that her friend was gone, came flooding back. Luna had whispered for days before she was taken, that she knew he would come back for her. Hermione had listened but she hadn't understood but somehow the other witch had _known_. She wondered if Luna had faced death with the same curiosity she had in life.

It hit her hard in that moment that now, like the Angel of Death of stories her family had told, Barty Crouch Jr. was here for _her_.

She wouldn't let him take her. _Not him._ He wouldn't have the satisfaction of destroying her too. In a gesture of defiance, although she knew it would mean nothing to the madman glaring down at her beyond the bars, Hermione grabbed for her bit of blade and made a mark for tomorrow- day 362- her eyes never leaving his as she moved her fingers back and forth over the line. He would not win. She would be here tomorrow.

For Luna's sake, she would survive this monster and any others that tried to break her.

The Death Eater knelt down in front of her, keeping the intensity building in their locked stare as his glare never wavered. "You _want_ to stay in this prison, Mudblood? Perhaps little Luna was wrong after all. And to think she's counted down the days."

 _Luna!_ "How dare you?!" She had wanted it to sound like a protest but her voice was too weak to give him anything than a cracked series of whispers.

As if to answer an unspoken request, he fished a flask from a pocket in his long duster. "Drink," he grunted, shoving it between the bars but not bothering to wait for her to reach from it. "The girl will have my head if you arrive sounding like that. You look and smell bad enough as it is."

She hadn't taken the flask. Her hands wouldn't move to pick it. She only stared at him with her heart beating too loudly in her ears.

He'd left then, snarling frustrations. Hermione retreated back into the furthest corner of her cell, closing her eyes and wishing it had all been a bad dream. That _all of it_ had been a bad dream.

Another day ticked by and then another. The grandfather clock chiming in the third day, day 365, since Crouch had come to plays tricks on her mind marked a full year.

A year.

One year measured in scratches in the stone that surrounded her all the time. At a loss of what else to do, as even tears stopped before reaching her eyes, Hermione Granger counted back the days, forwards and backward, reaching 365 before stopping and starting all over again.

It was all she had now.

* * *

 _Four-part fic. More posting soon!_


	2. Chapter 2

Barty Crouch Jr. knew a thing or two about the mind and tricks it played when there was danger lurking. It could fracture easily, break into a hundred uneven pieces that might never come back together again. It could shift and twist, changing memories quicker than the tides.

He knew these things because _the breaking of minds_ was his expertise.

He watched it happen when his wand pointed without respite at the Longbottoms that night nearly two decades ago. He lived it with a father who played the role of cruel master and vengeful god to his already dismantled son. He relished in it at the secret revenge he enacted on a brother in arms after the first hint of the sniveling man's betrayal only months ago.

The Muggles had more words for the broken mind, entire areas of study dedicated to fixing and preventing such incurable traumas. His world did not- often pushing people into simplified categories of black or white. Or maybe green and silver. Labels slapped on chests of school children just as his own had been long before he felt the pull to turn against all that he was supposed to cherish.

Others told him what he would become a long time ago. _Batty Barty_ could never have been anything less than a madman.

He used to care more, fighting the label even though his wand practically dripped blood as he pledged his life to the darkest of causes. Years of isolation and pain acted out in each curse left trembling bodies in his wake, and a pleased Lord to come back to. He was hailed as one of the favourites but when the new war ended before it ever really began, a wizard of his select talents was not often needed. Politics was the game now in place of brute violence and emotional reactions.

Barty was once again pushed to the back, the old stigmas of his broken mind coming back to haunt him in his humiliation. Thankfully, he was wise enough by now to hide the weakness of his bruised ego, recommitting himself into the new roles assigned to him. Revealing a soft spot was simply never an option in his way of life.

Apathy became his newest shroud, covering him more than his Death Eater robes as his Occlumency shields grew stronger. It calmed the whirling in his mind and made the seemingly endless meetings of the new world order easier to get through. The trouble was it calmed everything to a nearly screeching halt. Not _feeling_ meant not _thinking_ and that's what got wizards killed.

Even with his newfound demeanor, the cruel words society had placed on him before he had the chance to prove them true, followed Barty in every room he walked into. Words like mad, insane, manic had followed him since his first accidental magic… more added by still jealous brethren to call him evil, deranged…loony.

That was the one word that turned his eye to the little blonde witch long before he took her. _Loony Lovegood_ \- a nickname too similar to the one he had back in his Hogwarts years. He remembered from his days of hiding in plain sight, standing in front of a classroom as he watched the label constrain her greatness. Even as a child, it was clear she had potential far better than anything magical law would let out.

Barty hadn't cared enough to intervene then.

 _He did now._

Barty should not have touched her, shouldn't have reached out to take her hand. She was supposed to be a target. Nothing more. He knew that and yet- he reached out regardless of the warning bells inside his head.

Touching her changed things. Changed _him_.

It had begun as somewhat of a normal moment. As normal as his life could be now.

The Lovegood family was proclaimed as an enemy, the anachronistic punishment from his Lord was to take away its youngest member. All other heads of Pureblood family's had come at the new Ministry's calling, offering their reluctant pledges of loyalty to the Dark Lord. Even Arthur Weasley had slinked in, the deaths of his twin sons a useful tool to manipulate him.

Only Xenophilius Lovegood had refused. It angered the Dark Lord to have one of the sacred twenty-eight still defy him, even years after his control over the wizarding world secured. The seemingly impenetrable wards around the Lovegood home were too easy of a sign the odd man had something to hide.

Or someone.

Two of them to be exact. A fair-haired Pureblood daughter and her Mudblood friend discovered living a hidden life behind the wards once Barty broke through them. A few well-placed spells directed at Xeno's head before he left the distraught father behind, physically unharmed as per his orders, revealed the truth. They had been there in secret since the night the Potter boy's body had been thrown off the Astronomy Tower, his precious Headmaster's following closely after.

Bringing the witches back to Malfoy's should have been a simple task. Only seeing the Lovegood girl again, this time with proof of the years in her figure, cracked the emotionless facade just enough to let one powerful feeling seep through.

 _Want._

True madness would have been to not want her- _Luna_. To not want to see those large eyes that gleamed like silver widen in fear of him. To not want to see those pink lips part in lust back for him. He wanted to provoke her, to see how she would react. Would she be as strong as imagined? Or would she break?

When he had pulled the little witch closer to Apparate away with his prizes, his hand closing over hers for the briefest of moments, the action had muddled his thoughts even further. As if the brief touch had broken through the shields set so high to protect him. Barty couldn't be sure at the time _why_ he wanted her- only that he did.

She was filled with an impossible brightness that felt like the sun itself had set fire to his heart and yet, her eyes reflected only soothing moonlight that calmed the flames. It was instantaneous as if the two of them had met in past lives and yet still just beginning as if it was the first time.

His need to be near her battled against his need to survive, long after his original assignment pertaining the Lovegood girl had ended. Barty continued to come back to the Manor, volunteering with an eagerness he hadn't felt since his teenage years if only to be sure she was still there. He attended twice as many meetings, pacing on the floor above where the young witches were kept as if his footsteps could beat out a message his tongue couldn't deliver.

At the first opportunity to snatch her away- again- Barty broke through the spells around the Manor and whisked Luna away to his own home. He watched her as she pretended to sleep, the flutter of her eyelids whenever he got too close the only sign of how aware she was of him.

Barty wanted Luna for himself and so he took her- _again_. This time to his own home, to keep her sheltered away from the world.

He had been prepared for the knowledge of his transgression to reach the Dark Lord's ear within minutes, staying up that first night with his blade and wand drawn against any who would arrive to take her back, but nothing ever happened. To Barty's dismay, though he hid it relatively well, he was celebrated instead for his assumed cruelly, those in the inner circle spreading rumors of how _Batty Barty_ had killed again. Taking the witch only made him more of a monster in the eyes of his twisted brethren. To Luna too, he supposed, as days turned into weeks with her still silent and shaking whenever he entered the room he'd given her.

For the first time, his bloody reputation made him feel a shame almost foreign.

It was foolish to think taking the girl would solve anything but Barty hadn't given much thought on what would happen afterward.

He _should_ have walked away forever and continued living his years in the shadows, without too much trouble.

He _should_ have accepted the scar that would form over his heart as part of his collection of torn skin covering fractured bones.

He _should_ have left her in the cellar to rot as punishment for how she made him feel.

Anything would have been better than what he did. Barty could see that now, his rash and selfish actions doing nothing to help his cause but that is what he had always been. Quick to react to his emotions, giving into them no matter the pain it brought to himself or others. That was his madness- hers was her love. It wasn't long before he pieced together that this witch loved fully and completely. Just not _him_.

When he brought her to his home, offering shelter and protection, Barty didn't expect her to suddenly run into his arms. Though he dreamed of it. He did assume as the weeks continued on that her silence would have ended. That her silvery-blue eyes would look at him with less fear and that the quiet sobs she tried to hide when she thought he couldn't hear would taper off.

The only sounds she made came in screams when nightmares let her mind act out the emotions hidden from her during the day. He recognized the sound, the cries too similar to ones that had echoed from his childhood bedroom.

Barty woke her one night, whispering what comforts he could, however forced in his inexperience. He was sure not to touch her then. It would have been too much.

Luna never answered his sweet mumblings, never offered any of her own, but she would shift slightly closer, her hands folded over her heart as if she was trying to force it to stay together through her flesh and bone.

It bothered him to know she was in pain and yet, he was at a loss as to what to do. For all that he knew of broken minds, he knew nearly nothing about broken hearts.

He asked her once if there was anything he could do to make her happy. Luna's reply was the first time she spoke directly to him. She said one name, _Hermione_ , with a low voice and eyes still avoiding him. Hearing another's name on her lips set him into a jealous rage, one that made Barty leave his home for several days for fear of old anger acting against the witch he wanted to protect.

The night he returned, he found Luna standing by the door wrapped in blankets in a way that would have made any other woman look foolish but she had never looked more beautiful to him. She asked again for the Mudblood calling her _a sister,_ and he nodded in return. He would find a way. _For her._

The war had taken everything away from the little witch… _he_ had taken everything. What reminded was a shell of the witch she could have been but Barty thought that perhaps somehow the damage could be reversed.

A new _want_ took over the old one. He didn't just want to possess Luna, he wanted to prove something- something he wasn't able to name yet- to her.

He began to spend more time at Malfoy Manor, bringing back to his witch what little things he found out. The day he returned to say he had caught a glimpse of the Mudblood as she was being brought outside, Luna squeezed his hand. When he told her he'd snuck nutrient potions into the food prepared for her, he was rewarded with a smile.

Months into their new arrangement, Barty surprised her with a letter from her father, a favour owed to him by those guarding Azkaban made it easy to get access to Xeno's cell. She surprised him in turn by rushing over to him, arms wrapping around him as her lips offered a short, sweet kiss to his cheek.

Pleasing Luna through finding ways to help the ones she loved became his new mission, giving Barty a spring to his step he hadn't felt since his early days as a Death Eater. This was different than inflicting the torture he was used to and he could almost say he would trade her joyous reactions for any of the old pleasures of his life before.

It began a new rhythm into his days, made even sweeter as Luna started to talk _to_ him, sharing of old adventures and things she wanted to discover. He would talk too, avoiding subjects neither wanted to dwell on. As her smiles became more frequent, her nightmares less so, Barty wondered if maybe for once his skill of breaking fragile things like minds, hearts, and people could become something more.

He _wanted_ to break the fears that clouded her mind in between the moments of calm they shared.

He _needed_ to break the barriers still holding her back from feeling safe again.

He _would_ break his own allegiances, ready to turn his back on everything he had known for the chance of mending all that he had broken within his Luna. Every time her own warmth and kindness extended in his direction, it served to strengthen his determination to get her what she had asked of him months before. Hermione Granger would come under his own protection, anyone _she_ wanted would, _no matter the cost._

The night he stunned the guards in front of the cellar door at Malfoy Manor, Barty was grinning like the deranged madman he was rumoured to be. Only it wasn't in anticipation of something dark and dangerous, but for the smile, daresay even the kiss, he knew would be waiting for him at home. He _wanted_ to see Luna that happy more than he had wanted to take her away.

Sure, the Mudblood rejected his offer to escape, looking back at him with the most defiant look he'd likely ever seen, but Barty Crouch Jr. was one who got what he wanted.

He would be back and _soon._


End file.
